Wally, aka Mark Wallace, owner of the T30 Demonstrator in NZ waffles on about racing in the Nexus Gold Cup in Auckland.
Best results for us are races 2 and 6
The last one was a classic – only 6 miles out of 60 as a true beat up thru the Bottom End in next to no breeze – and the other bastards came thru in an Easterly and were in our cockpit off Passage Rk, basically the finish times are what we put on them from Passage Rk to the finish. We were about 25
minutes in front of Powerplay at Gannet Rk until then.
We could only see 2 bow lights behind us at Gannet – and they were masthead lights.
Course was out to Whangaparaoa, back up leaving Rangi to port then Waiheke to Stbd. Started in a sthly which went west as we headed up the bays -blew us nicely out of the Wade River without gybing (planned move – true story!).
Forecast was for sw going s then se so what are we doing with a westerly off the Bays? Meant we had a cracked sheets ride back into town rather than a beat – choice!! only Powerplay and Starlight got us but as we hoisted mhd genniker of Nthn Leading we could see the big boats parked off Issy Bay.
Quite a bit of gybing to stay in puffs saw us sail straight round them and off into the distance, just walked away from them, with the Mumm 36 next boat at that stage. Coming in from Passage had us in a westerly which had us pretty glum but 20 minutes later the breeze swung rnd the the E so up with msthd again and fucked off into the distance -again. PP was sneaking
down the Waiheke shore as we gybed across towards Cockle Bay/Eastern Beach.
They were looking good – until I checked on nowcasting (which I do regularly) and whaddaya know? 7knts at Tamaki strait – from the Sth! and here it comes and we fuck off again!! everywhere we went in the whole race the breeze followed us – shit we’re good tacktishuns eh?
Bloody excellent